1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a disease diagnosis apparatus and method for detecting a specific disease; and, more particularly, to a disease diagnosis apparatus and method for quantitatively diagnosing a disease by using amorphous silicon that generates a photocurrent.
This work was supported by the IT R&D program for MIC/IITA [2006-S-007-01, “Ubiquitous Health Monitoring Module and System Development”].
2. Description of Related Art
A disease diagnosis apparatus using paper chromatography, such as a pregnancy diagnosis kit or a marker protein diagnosis kit commercially available in the markets, is considered as being worthy in terms of convenience and economical efficiency.
However, the disease diagnosis apparatus using the paper chromatography has disadvantages in that it cannot measure the concentration of a target molecule, which is a specific biomaterial to be detected, and it degrades a reproduction, which is an ability to accurately express a relationship between a chromogenic signal and a target molecule concentration. This is because when a sample moves in a paper used in the paper chromatography, non-uniformity occurs in the movement of the target molecule such as protein.
Furthermore, the disease diagnosis apparatus using the paper chromatography has a disadvantage in that users should directly determine from a chromogenic signal whether a test result is positive or negative. That is, when the chromogenic signal is unclear, the determination results of the users may be different.